the most extraordinary adventures without damage. Coming down rapids at the rate of twenty miles an hour, it was often suddenly arrested in full career by a rock, the shock sending half the paddlers flying overboard.

(In this region the men all paddle standing up, both the bow and stern being flattened into a platform, three or four feet square, on which numbers of the men stand while at work.) After some months of the roughest work, which I do not think any other kind of boat could have withstood, I left this canoe at Stanley Falls, apparently as good as new. On the 17th of March we started, and within an hour were poling and dragging the canoes up the first rapids. The whole day was spent in this work. When the current was too strong, or when there was an actual fall of two or three feet to be mounted, we cut